Blitz Bureau
THE Trump administration on May 12 welcomed a small group of white South Africans as refugees, saying they face discrimination and violence at home, which the country’s government strongly denies, reported africanews.com.
The decision to admit the 49 people also has raised questions from refugee advocates about why the group should be admitted when the Trump administration has suspended efforts to resettle people who are fleeing war and persecution and have gone through years of vetting before coming to the US.
The group from South Africa, including children holding small American flags, arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on a private charter plane and was greeted by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar.
“I want you all to know that you are really welcome here and that we respect what you have had to deal with these last few years,” Landau told the group in a hangar at the airport. Earlier, President Donald Trump told reporters that he’s admitting these people as refugees because of the “genocide that’s taking place.”
He said that in postapartheid South Africa, white farmers are “being killed” and he plans to address the issue with South African leadership next week.
That characterisation, said the news portal report, is strongly denied by the South African Government and has been disputed by experts in the country and even an Afrikaner group. The South Africa’s Government says the US allegations that the white minority Afrikaners are being persecuted are “completely false,” the result of misinformation and an inaccurate view of its country. It cited the fact that Afrikaners are among the richest and most successful people in the country and said they are among “the most economically privileged.”
Afrikaners make up South Africa’s largest white group and were the leaders of the apartheid Government, which brutally enforced racial segregation for nearly 50 years before ending it in 1994. While South Africa has been largely successful in reconciling its many races after apartheid ended, tensions between some Black political parties and some Afrikaner groups have remained.
